Julie Walters: BBC is practically run by women

The BBC has so many female staff that it is "practically run by women",
Julie Walters has claimed.

Julie Walters says women are being given more interesting rolesPhoto: Richard Saker/Rex Features

By Nick Collins

5:56PM BST 20 May 2012

Mrs Walters, the Bafta and Emmy winning actress, said female actresses are slowly being given more scope to play interesting roles and valued more for their acting skills and less for their appearance.

Thanks to the growing number of female producers and writers at the BBC and increased focus on stories aimed at women, she said, older actresses are no longer confined to playing "dull" and "non-sexual" roles.

Mrs Walters said in an interview with the Observer: "It's getting better generally, daily, especially in TV, for women in acting; and age and looks count less as more women come into the business. Change of any sort takes a long time to happen.

"There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women's writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women."

But the actress, known for her roles in films like Educating Rita and Billy Elliott, admitted to being uncertain if she will play another film role after her forthcoming play, The Last of the Haussmans, which opens at the National Theatre this summer.

The arrival of her sixties coincided with the end of the Harry Potter films and shortly after Mo, a Channel Four drama about Mo Mowlam, and Mrs Walters admitted to "taking it easy a little bit".

She said: "Sixty felt like a big landmark. Not in a dreadful sense, but none of the other birthdays have bothered me. It's got labels on it – OAP, retirement – and I just wanted to take stock.

"I wanted to be in my greenhouse at home and at least give myself the opportunity of not working again ... I'm very fortunate in even having that choice."

The Last of the Haussmans, by Stephen Beresford, will mark the first time Mrs Walters has appeared on stage since Acorn Antiques: the Musical in 2005.

She said she identified with her character, an estranged mother who has failed to fully move on from the wild days of the 1960s, but that they share little in common.

She said: "She's one of those women I just knew. Oh, I went through bits of the 60s and thought myself a bit of a hippy – but still I'm nothing like this character, a true child of the 1960s.

"Her very difficult father and rather distant mother brought up her two children instead ... it's a great character, I just hope I can get it right."

Despite her repeated success at the Baftas, where she has won more awards than any other actress, Mrs Walters said quality acting and writing is suffering from a lack of government funding.

Rather than patronising projects destined to be blockbusters, public funds should be spent on works that ask questions of the audience, she said.

"In order to be creative you have to be allowed to fail," she said. "Some of the most interesting questions needing to be asked today can best be asked on television, or on stage, and they can be wonderful, great dramas, but they won't necessarily be blockbusters."